Aclara's Blue Cheese PEA; More Money thrown at eVAC; Pentagon pins RE Hopes on Hundreds of Millions of Lightbulbs; Pensana & Ucore Vapour Announcements;
Rare Earths 15 September 2024 #156
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A worst case scenario
The Ticking Bomb
The ongoing trade conflict can be summed up as:
The U.S. try to deny China access to those products China needs to import, while at the same time restricting vital access to the U.S. market for China’s export products.
And China tries to deny access the U.S. those products the U.S. need to import.
Both have entered a spiral of escalation which will be difficult to stop. It will eventually lead to China’s rare earths.
And this would hit two U.S. core industries.
NdPr, terbium and dysprosium oxides with their ridiculously small, embryonic and meaningless U.S. market will not be part of the problem.
Certain U.S. rare earth hopefuls sit on self-produced, unsaleable quantities of NdPr and more is in the pipeline from those up and coming. They can stir it in their morning coffee - which proves our point that the U.S. should have started at magnets, thereafter attend to the metals, then to separation of oxides/fluorides and finally to mining. But the U.S. government is exclusively listening to rare-earth-virgin spin-doctors, even fraudsters, and reality-untouched academics, throwing large amounts of money at all of them, while self-developing useless embargo technologies.
The Chinese know it, they are hiding their strength and biding their time, while Washington DC quite apparently has no clue just what may hit them. The world’s worst loose-cannon spy agency is fast asleep, as ever when it does not pursue its self-defined purposes with the dangerous combination of being off-the-leash and raw power, undermining world governments for no valid reason.
China can’t justify internally to embargo yet, but just imagine what happens in the U.S. if China withholds the two largest volume rare earth products it exports to industrialised nations anywhere. 70% of China’s total rare earth exports. The stuff no-one wants to produce.
Stopping exports of lanthanum, cerium and their derivatives will hit U.S. Big Oil (FCC catalysts) and Big Auto (catalytic converters) simultaneously with an impressive combination of body-blow and uppercut.
As regards Big Oil, it is obvious to the blind that no matter what, catalyst cost would be soaring, less effective, more expensive partial replacements would need to be employed, and the most unforgivable thing of all would happen inevitably: Prices at the pump would rise.
And Big Auto won’t find enough wash coat for its catalytic converters for plain, old, boring internal combustion engine cars and trucks.
Given enough time, a couple of years post embargo it could be fixed, but not fast enough and at cost multiples of China’s current export prices.
Impact of this would shake any flavour of U.S. government.
//Politics
Soon a hermit kingdom
China Is Becoming Much Harder for Western Scholars to Study
A relentless tightening of political controls by Chinese leader Xi Jinping has curtailed access to even routine information and throttled research into topics that were once open. Interactions between people in China and foreigners are subject to intensifying state surveillance, stymying the flow of ideas.
Those obstacles have led some China scholars to change their fields of study, or reprise research techniques developed during the Mao Zedong era, when the country was largely closed off to the rest of the world.Some academics worry that a decline in China studies will make it more difficult for the U.S. and other democracies to manage relations with one of the world’s most consequential nations, while Beijing continues building expertise on open societies in the West.
“We just don’t have the expertise on China that China has on us,” said Rory Truex, a politics scholar at Princeton University.
A growing number of foreign academics have returned to China since it reopened its borders in early 2023. But some say they have faced difficulties when entering or leaving the country, being held up for hours by immigration officials who grilled them about their research.
Not only “grilled”, foreign researchers have also “been disappeared” in China. Rare-earthlings beware.
This article is of course a post-mortem on a long decomposed carcass. Highly relevant archives were closed off many years ago. The Chinese oyster has substantially closed.
We really don’t understand what endgame strategy Xi has in mind. He is the one to promote international people to people exchanges and opening up, when as a matter of fact nowadays one has to read China from the intestines of a dead crow on a highway having been run-over multiple times by a convoy of fully laden trucks and busses.
While we completely understand the reasons for China acting this way, how a nation that feels so misunderstood by- and so dependent on the rest of the world wants to afford such policy is a mystery.
Our relationship with China bases on trust and understanding. They don’t trust us and we don’t understand them.
Horst H. Damm
Meanwhile in USA
Former High-Ranking New York State Government Employee Charged with Acting as an Undisclosed Agent of the People's Republic of China and the Chinese Communist Party
Defendant Engaged in Political Activities in the Interests of the CCP and With Her Co-Defendant Husband Conspired to Launder the Proceeds of Their Unlawful Activities
BROOKLYN, NY – Earlier today, in federal court in Brooklyn, an indictment was unsealed charging Linda Sun with violating and conspiring to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act, visa fraud, alien smuggling, and money laundering conspiracy. Sun is alleged to have acted on behalf of the government of the People’s Republic of China (the “PRC”) and the Chinese Communist Party (the “CCP”). Sun’s husband and co-defendant Chris Hu was also charged with money laundering conspiracy, as well as conspiracy to commit bank fraud and misuse of means of identification.
Sun and Hu were arrested this morning and are scheduled to be arraigned later today before United States Magistrate Judge Peggy Kuo.
Entirely coincidental and totally unrelated:
US says China's New York envoy was not expelled but finished posting
China's consul general in New York left his post as scheduled after completing his posting last month, the State Department said on Wednesday, hours after New York's governor said she asked for his expulsion in the aftermath of an aide's arrest for secretly acting as a Chinese agent.
State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters that Consul General Huang Ping "was not expelled."
We do believe in the Tooth Fairy, we do! But more likely he was told to pack and leave, before being thrown out.
Turkey Eyes Chinese Partnership to Develop Rare Earths Deposits
Under the leadership of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish government has been proactive in seeking Chinese involvement in the exploitation and processing of rare earth elements.
In 2022, Turkey discovered a large deposit of the critical metals in Beylikova, near Eskisehir in Central Anatolia.
Since then, Turkey has positioned itself as a potentially key player in the global rare earths supply chain, targeting various high-tech applications such as EVs and renewable energy technologies.
Turkey is NATO member, aspiring to EU membership. And that would be beginning and end of the Türkiye - China rare earth partnership story.
Meanwhile China is quietly exploring rare earth opportunities in the Caucasus, while trying not to upset Moscow.
Economic Watch: China announces anti-discrimination probe in response to Canada's tariff hikes
China on Tuesday announced an anti-discrimination investigation amid a slew of countermeasures against Canada's tariff hikes on electric vehicles (EVs) as well as steel and aluminum products imported from the country.
The anti-discrimination probe into Canada's tariff moves will be initiated in accordance with relevant stipulations of China's foreign trade law, and corresponding measures will be taken subsequently in light of actual conditions, a spokesperson of the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) said in an online statement.
It is learned that this was the first such investigation initiated by China and also the first of its kind in the world.
We find it remarkable that a country that has not fully implemented its WTO accession protocol is appealing to the WTO to enforce rules on others.
Aspects of China’s global economic coercion strategy
Some officials in the US administration understand China’s strategy very well. One of them is Jose Fernandez, the State Department’s Undersecretary for economic growth, energy and the environment, who recently noted while speaking at the Asia Society that China is facing greater scrutiny and resistance globally as it is wielding its sizeable trade and geo-political leverage to coerce smaller countries economically. Fernandez said at a public event that Washington had created a playbook to help countries that came under pressure. He added that China is a “great practitioner of this economic-coercion strategy” adding that “The threat of coercion is often enough to stop countries from making sovereign decisions that may upset [China] in the first place.” This raises the question of whether China has overplayed its hand with economic coercion. The pushback that China has experienced in recent years indicates a certain disillusionment that countries have with Beijing and its policies.
The article also says “In 2010, China imposed an unofficial export embargo of rare earth minerals to Japan following a territorial dispute over the Senkaku islands.”
This is incorrect, it is a myth, as we have analysed for you in detail before. China’s denials in this regard are actually credible.
China Renews Unmet Trade Promises at China-Africa Summit, Promotes Its Global South Agenda in Search for Gaining More Influence
Last week, the 2024 summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) took place in Beijing. China employed one of its typical tactics by claiming it had been Africa’s largest trading partner for fifteen years. However, this claim is inaccurate. In reality, the European Union, which is a single trade entity, significantly surpasses China in trade with Africa.
Not really a surprise.
We missed this one
The Ministry of Natural Resources held a meeting on mineral resource management and a new round of strategic action to promote mineral exploration breakthroughs, proposing: Do everything possible to find large mines, good mines, and urgently needed mines.
On March 14, the Ministry of Natural Resources held a meeting to promote the strategic action of mineral resource management and a new round of prospecting breakthroughs, summarizing and reviewing the work in 2023, analyzing the current situation of mineral resource management and geological prospecting, and planning and deploying key tasks in 2024. Wang Guanghua, Secretary of the Party Group and Minister of the Ministry, attended the meeting and delivered a speech. Xu Dachun, member of the Party Group and Vice Minister of the Ministry, presided over the meeting, and Li Jinfa, member of the Party Group and Director of the China Geological Survey, attended the meeting.
In 2024, we must continue to improve mineral resource management in accordance with the arrangements of the Central Economic Work Conference and the two sessions of the National People's Congress, continue to carry out a new round of strategic actions for mineral exploration breakthroughs, and do everything possible to find large mines, good mines, and urgently needed mines, so as to build momentum for the development of new quality productivity and provide energy and resource guarantees for promoting Chinese-style modernisation.
You can bet that rare earth is among the “urgently needed mines.”
Data security management measures for natural resources sector issued
In order to standardise data processing activities in the field of natural resources, strengthen data security management, ensure data security, and promote data development and utilization, the Ministry of Natural Resources recently issued the "Measures for Data Security Management in the Field of Natural Resources" (hereinafter referred to as the "Measures"), requiring the Ministry of Natural Resources, the State Forestry and Grassland Administration and local industry regulatory departments to incorporate data security into the national security responsibility system of the Party Committee (Party Group), and implement the data security guidance and supervision responsibilities of the industry, region and field in accordance with the principle of "who manages the business, who manages the data, and who manages the data security".
Bid farewell to exploration data from China.
//Science
Newly Developed “Chameleon” Chemical Could Revolutionize Rare-Earth Metal Purification
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